Video
Everglades Environmental Education: Loop Road Slough Slog
Descriptive Transcript
Description Narrator: A group of alligators thrash into the water. Fish swim around underwater vegetation. A controlled fire burns a habitat. A bird appears in a hole in a dead tree. A ranger gives a guided canoe tour. Aerial footage of Mangroves. A snail glides along a tree branch.
Everglades National Park. National Park Service logo.
A Great Egret balances on a tree.
Everglades Environmental Education. Loop Road Slough Slog.
Leaves sprout from a tree branch. A feather floats on water. A snake curled on a downed tree.
Bald cypress trees next to a trail.
Ranger: All right. Here we are. Hold right here? OK, I need everybody to stop.
Description Narrator: A group of children and chaperones follow rangers on a trail, and into the slough. The children react to the cold water as they follow the ranger.
Children: Oh god, this is cold! Look how warm this is, I love it!
Ranger: That bad, huh guys?
Children: Oh god! Oh, this is crazy! Ah!
Description Narrator: The children splash through shallow water among Cypress trees using walking sticks to steady themselves.
Children: Did they make a trail?
Ranger: Alright, so I would like to welcome you guys to the Cypress Slough. What do you guys think so far?
Children: It's great. Awesome. Cold.
Ranger: But amazing, right? Alright, so this is your afternoon. We are going to let you guys explore. There is a lot of amazing wildlife right here all around us, and we have given you guys the tools.
Hunter, can I borrow your backpack real quick?
Hunter: Sure.
Ranger: To really get in and explore this place. So first, Hunter has his dip net. It's an excellent tool for finding all kinds of different fish. We have crustaceans, all kinds of cool stuff here. So inside of your backpacks, you have a guide to the things that you're going to find here in the slough.
Description Narrator: The ranger takes a laminated flyer out of the backpack. The flyer displays illustrations of various fish species inhabiting the slough.
Ranger: On the first page, it's got a bunch of different fish that you guys will find. Over here, all kinds of different aquatic life. So that's a good tool for you. You also have another guide to the fish. You have...
Ranger: So, you guys take your packs, go out and explore and I'll call you back in probably like a half hour and we're going to go look and discuss all the awesome things we found.
Description Narrator: An underwater camera shows small fish swimming in the water.
Dip nets scoop up fish and plants from under the water.
Chaperone: Wow!
Description Narrator: A child sifts through the collected water in his plastic tub to view the fish. The Ranger assists him in identifying a fish.
Ranger: That's kind of my guess. Let's look at the mouth. Okay, so it’s got a huge sail dorsal-like fin.
Child: Blue scales... I don't see any here.
Ranger: So that's probably a female flag fish, is what that is.
Description Narrator: The children tromp through the slough. A child in the background gets stuck in the slough.
Child: And now I'm stuck. The boys have found a shrimp.
Description Narrator: In the foreground, children examine the contents of their plastic tubs.
Child: I can't move, I'm stuck!
Ranger: My foot is like completely stuck; there we go.
Chaperone: What kind of fish is this one?
Child: Should we put water in it?
Ranger: That...
Description Narrator: A child holds a captured crayfish to the camera.
Chaperone: I think it's a crayfish. Yeah, there are a couple of them.
Description Narrator: A child and a chaperone show their findings to the Ranger and the camera.
Child: A snail... We found a glass shrimp, but I'm having trouble finding it.
Ranger: Why don't you just... Could you just tell me what it looks like?
Child: It's a very small shrimp and it's called a glass shrimp because you can see through it. You can see like its brain and everything.
Chaperone: Oh, the fish just ate it.
Child: The fish ate it?
Chaperone: Yeah.
Child: We lost it.
Chaperones: Yeah, the fish ate it. Oh, wow.
Description Narrator: The ranger shows a crayfish to a crowd of children.
Ranger: I don't think he's going to fit into the problem. And he's going to pinch me but check him out. That's a big one.
Chaperone: Crayfish!
Child: Who's is that? Who found that?
Ranger: Wow. You guys have quite the collection. It's awesome.
Children: ...And he dropped it. It was slippery.
Chaperone: What was it?
Child: Slippery.
Ranger: Wow. Very cool.
Child: I'm looking for that big crayfish.
Ranger: So, I'd like to congratulate you guys right now for your very first slough slog. You are now Glades men and Glades women. So, thank you guys, give yourselves a round of applause. Very good job.
And you guys were wonderful explorers today. You found some amazing stuff, so I would like to go around the circle, first off, and have you guys show at least one of the things that you found today to the group. So, would you guys like to go first?
Children: Yes.
Ranger: Alright.
Child: And then we got a bunch of little glass shrimp.
Ranger: Yeah, this group got quite a few glass shrimp, which are really amazing to see. If we put the glass shrimp in that magnifying glass, you'd be able to see right through their body. One day we found a mother with eggs inside of her belly. We can see all of her eggs. Very amazing. Alright. You guys did an amazing job.
Children: Thank you.
Ranger: They also got some Ramshorn snails, some live ones...
Child: And some fishies.
Ranger: And a water beetle. Are we up to Jake and Chase's group?
Description Narrator: A child holds a piece of bark with eggs attached.
Chaperone: Those are all eggs, right?
Ranger: Yeah, as far as I can tell, it looks like those are eggs.
As you guys can tell, we are in the middle of the dry season and everything is drying down, so I want you to take a look at those trees. What kind of trees are those again, guys? These right here, these are bald cypress trees. These trees are pretty much completely covered with lichen. So, and then also, if you take a look, do you guys have any idea what these plants are that are covering these trees?
Child: She said it.
Ranger: Jake?
Jake: Air plant.
Ranger: Air plant, excellent. Also called bromeliads. So, they are covering these trees. You guys have any idea where they might be getting their nutrients from? Chase, do you know?
Chase: Uhm, do they get the nutrients from the air when it's on the tree?
Ranger: Excellent. They're not taking any nutrients from the tree. They're just taking the nutrients from the air, which is pretty cool. Also, sometimes bugs will fall inside of the air plants, and they will start to decay. And that's another way that the air plants will get their nutrients, is from those dead and decaying insects. But most of it just comes right from the air. All they use the trees for is really support.
Description Narrator: A flowering air plant with pink buds extends out of the plant. The pink flowers are shown as wispy white seeds moving with the wind.
Ranger: Yeah, there's quite a few of them that are flowering right now.
Those flowers, when they turn to seed, the seeds are these really wispy things that will fly up in the air and they'll just get stuck right underneath a little piece of the bark on the cypress tree. And that's how they start to grow. They'll just start growing right there from that very spot.
So, I want you guys before we go, I want you to take a good look around you. What do you guys think? This is a pretty amazing place, isn't it?
Children: Yeah. Oh yeah. I can’t see anything, the sun’s in my eye.
Ranger: You guys are probably ready to go.
Children: No!
Ranger: So, I'm going to ask you guys to dump out your aquariums and return what you found back to marsh.
Description Narrator: As the group exits the slough, a child trips into the water.
Children: Ohh! Chase!
Chaperone: So cool.
Ranger: Isn't that awesome?
Chaperone: That was so awesome.
Child: That was fun, I guess.
Ranger: You guess? So, say what's not fun about it?
Child: I almost did. Almost.
Ranger: I almost fell today too.
Children: He tripped over a log again. It was just one little log right there. Yeah, he went right on it, and he almost fell. And then he went up again and his clothes were stuck.
Chaperone: Hey Hunter, look at your right heel.
Hunter: My what?
Chaperone: Your right heel.
Hunter: What do I got on it?
Chaperone: Just some seaweed...
Child: I need to empty my shoes.
Description Narrator: Stagnant water.
An air plant sprouting from a cypress tree.
A Great Egret perched in a tree.
The quiet yet noisy sounds of the Everglades – birds, wind, and water – return after the group departs.
This fifth-grade class participated in the Everglades camping program at the Loop Road Environmental Education Center.
For more information, please visit: http://www.nps.gov/ever/forteachers.
Anyone can participate in a slough slog. Ask a ranger to learn more!
U.S. Department of the Interior, National Park Service. Everglades National Park.
Everglades National Park video.
Featuring: Ranger Courtney Oines.
Producer, Director, Editor: Jennifer Brown.
Executive Producers: Allyson Gantt, Greg Litten.
Production Assistant: Andrew Pringle.
Music performed by: Jami Sieber, ‘Invisible Wings’ from the Lush Mechanique album. Magnatunes Records, www.magnatunes.com.
Description
Video about a school group exploring a cypress dome on a slough slog (10 min. with closed-captions).
Duration
10 minutes, 9 seconds
Credit
NPS video by Jennifer Brown
Date Created
07/30/2010
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